“Miss Andrea, am I supposed to be back here with you, or am I supposed to be in the big room playing?” Chyna says, sticking her head inside the room.
“You’re supposed to be back here,” Andrea says. “I have your books. Come on in.” Chyna bounces past Andrea and Lauren to a cubicle and Andrea follows, stopping to look back at Lauren. “I go to the farmer’s market every now and then. Why?”
Lauren waves her hand in the air. “No big deal.”
TWENTY-THREE
November 1972
John and Alice help Joan to prepare the Thanksgiving meal. Despite their best efforts to make high-fat meals, Joan has gained only three pounds, not enough for Dr. Levy to remove more of her lung. “This meal alone should put on the five extra pounds you need,” John says, kissing her cheek.
“This stuffing can do that alone!” Alice says, pouring butter into a bowl with crumbled cornbread, bread, celery, onion, and spices.
“My favorite!” Joan says, reaching into the bowl for a taste. “I haven’t had the chance to make it.” Her voice carries a hint of sadness, which strikes Alice’s heart. “I should have started using your recipes years ago.”
“You’ll make it,” Alice says. She’s not talking about the stuffing, and John and Joan both know it. She stops mixing the ingredients together and pushes the bowl in front of Joan. “Today’s the day! You make it for Thanksgiving this time, and I’ll take over the potatoes.” She reaches for the potato that Joan is peeling.
Joan stands quiet, looking at her mom. “Did John tell you to say that?”
Alice looks at John and he shrugs. “Say what? You can make the stuffing?”
Joan looks at John. “‘Today’s the day.’”
His eyes widen. “I didn’t catch that.”
Alice is confused, beginning to peel the potato. “What’s the big deal about ‘today’s the day’? It’s a pretty common phrase.”
Joan begins adding more ingredients to the stuffing. “John says it to me as in ‘today’s the day God is healing you of cancer.’”
Alice stops peeling and looks up at both of them. “Really?” For as long as Alice has known John, there hasn’t been a smack of God talk or about religion or spirituality of any kind from him or Joan, and this surprises her.
“Yeah,” Joan says, stopping her work. “What do you think about that?”
Alice is quiet, trying to keep tears from forming, but they rim her eyes anyway. She looks at Joan, smiling. “I think that today’s the day!”
November 2012
Lauren is carrying Christmas decorations out of the storage room when her cell phone rings in her pocket. The children are outside, waiting in the pickup line with most of the volunteers. She reaches for her phone, answering it. “Hello.”
“Is this Lauren?”
It is a woman’s voice that Lauren doesn’t recognize. “Yes.”
“This is Kathy Waters. You left a note on my father-in-law Bud’s door.”
“Right!” Lauren says, bubbling with excitement as she reaches with one hand for another small box of decorations.
“I wanted to let you know that he’s been in Arizona, visiting his brother, but while he was there Bud became ill and his trip home is delayed until he’s better. He hasn’t seen your note. Can I help you?”
Lauren continues to pull decorations from the shelves. “I don’t know. This is going to sound crazy, but I found a lot of recipes inside a table that I bought, and some of the recipes mention buying milk from Bud. I’m hoping he can remember who these recipes belong to because I don’t think their owner meant to give them away with the table.”
“Huh,” Kathy says. “I don’t know if he’d be able to remember someone or not. My father-in-law is elderly and not in the best physical shape anymore. He sold the farm years ago. My husband flew out this morning to be with him in Arizona. When we’re able to bring him home, I will tell him to call you.”
“Thanks,” Lauren says. “And I hope your father-in-law gets better soon.”
“Thanks! I do, too.”
Lauren hangs up and realizes she has done everything that she can do to find the owner of the recipes. She hates to think that someone has lost them forever, but there’s nothing more she can do. She is opening the boxes of the decorations when Gloria, Miriam, Dalton, Heddy, Amy, Stacy, and Andrea finish with afternoon pickup and step back inside. “Same areas as last year, Gloria?” Lauren asks.
“Whatever you think best,” Gloria says.
Each box is marked with the location where the decorations were used last year: front window, entry doors and check-in, bulbs for tree, tutoring room, reading center, Gloria’s office, etc. “All right!” Lauren says. “Grab a box and decorate a section. Dalton, can you get the tree out of the storage room and carry it to the front entry? We’ll have the kids make decorations this week for the tree, but here’s a box of bulbs for it.”
Gloria reaches for a box. “Come on. We can get this done in thirty minutes or so. Many hands make light work!”
Miriam scoffs. “Hurry up, everyone, before Gloria pelts us with more of her Southern phrases.”
Gloria walks across the big room to the reading center. “That’s not southern, Miriam.”
Miriam picks up a box for the front windows. “If it’s not British, it’s Southern. Everything American sounds the same to me.”
“And everything British sounds goofy,” Gloria says, opening a box. “Tiggety who! What does that even mean?”
Miriam pulls decorations from the box in a huff. “It’s tickety-boo, Gloria, and I can assure you that things are not tickety-boo right now.” Gloria laughs and hands her a reindeer decoration for the front window ledge.
Lauren loads a classic Christmas CD into the player and turns it up, drowning out Gloria and Miriam. “Christmas spirit, people!” She puts on an elf hat and wraps tinsel
